Defragmenter

The built-in defragmenter is currently under development. It won't be finished
for another couple of months, but we're confident we can finish it as the filesystem
structure was designed from the beginning with transparent defragmenting in mind.

The defragmenter will run automatically in the background when there has been no disk
activity for a specific period of time. Defragmentation can start almost immediately
without first having to do a lot of scanning of the disk. No large structures need
to be created during defragmentation so memory consumption will be very low (in the order
of 10 to 100 kilobytes or so). Defragmentation can be stopped at any time without
losing any data. Even a reset or powerfailure won't lose you any data.

The algorithm we will be using for defragmentation will be very straightforward, to
conserve on memory and to be able to start and stop defragmenting within seconds.
Only files and free space will be defragmented. For now, no attempt will be made to
defragment directories and other internal structures.

Some kind of interface will be provided to monitor defragmentation while it is in
progress, to control when it starts and to stop it when needed. Later on we may even
provide an interface for external defragmenation programs.

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For comments, problems or questions regarding this page contact John Hendrikx.
Last updated: 17 oktober 1998.